Desperate Men
by Scarlet Secret
Summary: Oneshot. After the spell is performed Lilah retreats to the hotel, where she is eventually joined by a vampire and a carpenter.


A/N: This may contradict things in the fifth series as I never saw it but if it does please approach it as an AU. Other than that enjoy! Please R+R.

* * *

After Angel and his crew took over the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram and Hart the Hyperion Hotel was once again left abandoned. After he performed the spell making everybody forget his ill-fated son they also forget Lilah. Not completely though, she was still the bitch from the law firm who had helped to make their lives all the more dangerous. But there was no memory of her role in Connor's abduction or in the downfall of Wesley.

Wesley can't remember her at all and this fact hurts her more than she cares to remember. She thought Angel's malice would make her remain at the firm in some demeaning job, so she had to bear witness to how happy her lover was with Fred. But instead he sent her away. Destroyed her contract. She was free but she had nowhere to go – so she went to the hotel. The last refuge of desperate men it seemed. She bought it from Angel without him even realising it, posing as an anonymous buyer, and she finds it oddly comforting to live in the place where she died.

After a month or so she hears that Buffy Summers and her entourage are in town, but she knows the best thing she can do is avoid them. And she does it rather well till one of them decides to visit Angel's old living quarters.

Xander Harris had no idea who she is to begin with of course. But she feels in a polite mood and she has long since stopped wearing her suits and so the formality of her previous existence is gone and he smiles when he shakes her hand and she feels compelled to smile back. Xander comes back every day for a week, bringing food and DVDs and they chat about nothingness. He tell her how he lost his eye and she scares him to death when she pulls her head clean off, which is a stunt she's been dying to try on somebody for months.

Buffy and her various hangers on leave after three weeks but Xander is too tired for battle now and he stays behind and Lilah lets him live in her hotel for free. The night after Xander unpacks Angel comes to the hotel; he had followed Xander's scent and immediately picked up Lilah's when he walked through the doors. They both glare at him and Lilah calmly says the hotel is hers now and then they politely ask him to leave. He didn't. Xander threatened to call Buffy back and he left without a word. Her opinion of Angel's new occupation hadn't been favourable.

Xander told her about Anya and about how she reminded him a little of her. She said he had absolutely nothing in common with Wesley and that was why she liked him so much. On the first night that she slipped herself into his bed Xander had panicked and not known what she wanted but eventually he learned to just put his arms around her so she didn't cry, which she had found herself doing a great deal of when she was on her own.

They tried to dance, she had always enjoyed it and he had learnt for his wedding but never got to show it off, but they couldn't do it properly. They couldn't move too quickly or the stitches in her side would pull and bleed. They couldn't do complicated steps because he couldn't entirely see where he was going and his balance wasn't right. And he couldn't dip her, as her head would fall off. So they just ambled around the lobby of the hotel, singing off-key (even though Lilah once had lessons) more than dancing and that was what they were doing when Drusilla arrived.

Initially they had understandably panicked and ran around desperate to find a weapon but she hadn't moved an inch and seemed to be looking at them as though they were vaguely amusing rather than dinner. When they come to a standstill in front of her, still wary on both counts, after all, both of them had experienced particularly unnerving moments with the psychic.

It takes her a few moments to tell them why she's there. She's lonely, everybody she ever knew is dead or hunting her and she has a very peculiar lack of drive to kill things any more saying that she felt sorry for them, which she never had before. For the first time since leaving the firm Lilah's contacts come in handy and by the morning they establish that Drusilla has somehow acquired a soul. Xander doesn't believe it at all at first saying it had to be a trick and he carries on running around looking for a cross. Lilah has become too fond of him to chastise him, but she rolls her eyes and looks at Dru closer. She sees none of the malice or evil that was present in the wine cellar, so many years ago now (and she never did find out what happened to her pearls), and the sparks of insanity seem dimmer. For the first time she sees the girl that Dru once was and she manages to convince Xander. Although she makes a point of putting a cross under her pillow. She has a feeling Dru knows anyway but the vampiress doesn't seem to mind.

Drusilla is allowed to live in the hotel after that. She takes a bedroom that Lilah's notes is about as far away as she could have picked from Angel's old room and Lilah is interested to note that Dru doesn't seem to be suffering from the crippling guilt that characterised Angel and Spike. Rather she seems able to easily distinguish her human self from the demon and although she is not quite as abstract or eerie there is still a good deal of creepiness about her and she is still Drusilla and Lilah doesn't think they would have let her stay if she had changed too much.

One night Lilah had crept into Xander's room and was feeling safe in his arms as she has grown so accustomed to doing and Drusilla arrived a few minutes later. Complete in her white night-dress, her raven hair falling about her face Lilah thinks she looks every inch the ravaged virgin of folklore and for a minute sees what Angelus saw. Xander pulls away the sheets and lets Dru slip in the other side of him, which she does with a grin. Even though she's the other side of Xander Lilah can feel how cold Dru is and is impressed that Xander hasn't flinched away. She drapes her legs across them both in an attempt at friendliness to the vampire and Dru sighs happily as the falls asleep.

When they wake up she says she's warmer than she's been in years and Lilah noticed the very suggestion of colour in her cheek. It's a start.

They carry on like this for weeks, months even. They all venture out for movie releases, something they discover with amusement they all have a fondness for. Every week they have a video night with Chinese food, (which even Dru can't eat a full portion of) one week Lilah demands they watch Ingrid Bergman _noir, _the next Dru will produce Hammer Horror films and laugh herself silly over them and her companions get caught up in her mirth and join in. Xander plays Blockbuster films and Dru falls in love with the flashing colours.

Their night-time ritual remains the same although they have to teach Drusilla not to hold them too tightly and it seems that they're reminding her of Xander's continued need to breath every morning. Lilah doesn't need the oxygen but her muscles are beginning to hurt and she knows that it won't be too long before her essentially zombie body begins to give up on her. (Like in _Death Becomes Her_, which Xander had produced two months into their habitation and Lilah had most definitely NOT been amused at the comparison.)

Dru vanishes for a week and they worry incessantly although they know she's perfectly capable of looking after herself and she had forewarned them that she was going on a quick trip. When she gets back she gives Lilah an old autograph book and Xander a glass eye she swear blind one belonged to a Gestapo officer. She had been to England, to wherever it was she had stored the memorabilia she had collected through the years and whilst Lilah goes into raptures upon discovering some of the names in the little book they both have to politely explain to Dru that though Xander liked his present too, it was a bit disgusting to wear a glass eye that belonged to somebody else. Especially if that somebody was a Nazi. They didn't really know why, but somehow it seemed more unhygienic.

After four months of living like this, (they dread to think what the local butcher is assuming about them) Angel visits them again. Upon seeing Drusilla he chuckles unpleasantly which surprises them all. Wolfram and Hart it seems were behind her soul returning, as Angel had decided she was the last member of his "family" who needed stopping and wanted to do this rather than end the suffering he had cause.

It was then that the trio realised that they had probably all bonded initially over a combined hatred for Angel. It surprised him enough to stop him in his tracks when Lilah and Xander stood between him and Dru, blocking his path and knowing he could shove them aside with no effort and it surprised them all when Dru threw several knives in succession at Angel. They hit him in his legs, preventing him from charging at the three and they began to run through the hotel, knowing he was following and yet enjoying themselves. Indeed if Angel hadn't possessed the sense he had he would have been able to find them from Dru and Lilah's maniacal laughter. When he eventually catches them they are all together at the top of the hotel, which is where Lilah knows Angel had previously confronted Bethany Chalke.

Bethany who had finally, _finally, _stood up to her father. When they stop running and Drusilla turns on Angel the similarities are not subtle, although Xander is looking around for something to use as a weapon and it almost makes her cry that this brave, brave, noble boy is willing to fight Angel in Dru's place. Lilah throws her arms around his torso from behind and tells him that Dru needs to finish this.

She doesn't fight him physically, although still slightly mad she knows she could never best her sire in a fight. But she raves at him, coherently as well. She tells him about the life he ruined and how she doesn't blame herself for the deaths her demon caused but he should feel guilty because he made the monster. He is stunned into silence and Lilah wonders whether he's ever heard Drusilla form completely lucid sentences before. But she does and in no uncertain terms tells him never to come near the hotel again. At this point Lilah attempts to look threatening but she is still busy holding Xander back and the effect is somewhat ruined. And he goes. For good and somehow Lilah knows it is the last time she or Xander will see him again. Perhaps Dru will encounter him in another lifetime but she doesn't like to think about Dru having to go on living without them.

Drusilla laughs once he is gone with abject glee and it becomes infectious. Xander spins her around as she giggles and Lilah dances around with them, (not too vigorously, Dru had learnt that rule too.) She kisses them both full on the mouth and that breaks through the other barrier of tension that has been building up between them. It isn't much, but it's a start.

That night they sleep in Lilah's bed (she has long since thrown away the cross under her pillow) with Lilah curled up at Xander's side and Dru's head resting on his stomach and Dru beings to tell them stories. She had done this before and they had to stop her on more than one occasion when they realised the story was likely to become a little too gruesome for the new pacifists. After Angel's visit though she tells them stories of such beauty that Lilah is tempted to write them down and sell them and not for the first time she wonders if Anne Rice just wrote down a vampire's life story. She also wonders if she'd be sued for copyright for doing the same thing.

Nights later Dru makes another attempt at romance by climbing on top of Xander in their communal bed to kiss him and stroking Lilah's hair, perhaps a little more violently than she realises. The night doesn't go anywhere though as Dru knocks Lilah's head a little off kilter and the wound begins to leak and after that the vampiress is convinced that she will hurt them terribly, although it doesn't stop her curling into one of their laps every now and then just to feel warm.

After six months Lilah nearly breaks down and cries when she finds her skin beginning to peal off. Only small strips but enough to send her into what would be the first of many depressions. Xander and Drusilla realise there is nothing they can do. Xander was never a vain man and Dru hasn't changed in a century and a half, so they find it impossible to find the right emotions to help Lilah when she sinks into her slump. However no more comes off and Lilah seems to rally for a while, reasoning that if its only a few strips of skin every six months then she might be alright for some time. They all know she's being faintly ridiculous.

Eventually Xander can't stand her moping and calls Willow for help, something he swore half a year ago he would never, ever do. She is harder than he remembers her and sounds callous over the phone as he begs her to help Lilah. Willow it seems has had her account of the ex-lawyer from Angel or Fred, says she will do what she can and hangs up. She doesn't call them back and three weeks later Lilah is still depressed and keeps examining her face in a mirror.

When Dru can't stand Lilah's agony any longer she spends an afternoon smashing every mirror in the hotel and Xander helps her to clear away the debris and together they paint over the walls and it is as though the offending glass was never there. Lilah was thrilled that she didn't have to look at her skin and this time she genuinely perked up.

In language which left little to the imagination Xander tells Willow that he wants nothing to do with her if she now allows other people to suffer, no matter who they are. Lilah and Drusilla were astounded but he didn't waver and they both tried to kiss him that night but he gently stopped them both. He smiled faintly and watched them with a surprising lack of perversion, as they lay in each other's arms, rested against his chest, content and calm.

They stayed like that for a very long time.


End file.
